Useful Articles and Resources – Gabriel Catalano®

Content that pulls. And content that pushes.

There are several factors that drive us to create new content for our websites.

Maybe we have a list of pages to be written that will be optimized for long-tail keywords.

Or we have a list of topics we need to address to complete various subject areas on our site.

Or we have some reader questions to answer.

Or we have some pages to put up with a view to getting good distribution through social media.

But as we immerse ourselves in writing these pages, we can lose sight of the fact that a web page needs a purpose beyond just being there as a source of information.

To put it simply, a web page needs to be either pulling or pushing.

Pulling new readers into the site for the first time, and pulling returning visitors back again and again.

Or pushing readers to take an action – whether to subscribe, to buy, to sign up, to download, to take a free trial, or click on a revenue-earning link.

So once you have created that list of upcoming content, whether it be about keywords, customer questions, missing subject matter…or whatever…mark it as either a page that is written to pull, or to push.

What’s the difference? How do you write pages that pull or push?

by Nick Usborn (¹)

There are several factors that drive us to create new content for our websites.

Maybe we have a list of pages to be written that will be optimized for long-tail keywords.

Or we have a list of topics we need to address to complete various subject areas on our site.

Or we have some reader questions to answer.

Or we have some pages to put up with a view to getting good distribution through social media.

But as we immerse ourselves in writing these pages, we can lose sight of the fact that a web page needs a purpose beyond just being there as a source of information.

To put it simply, a web page needs to be either pulling or pushing.

Pulling new readers into the site for the first time, and pulling returning visitors back again and again.

Or pushing readers to take an action – whether to subscribe, to buy, to sign up, to download, to take a free trial, or click on a revenue-earning link.

What’s the difference? How do you write pages that pull or push? Continuar leyendo «Content that pulls. And content that pushes.»

DAT, el día después…

DAT, por sus siglas en inglés (Day after tomorrow), resume un equipo de trabajo especializado en hacer frente a las contingencias del “día después”. [Más…] Contingencia puede definirse como un evento o suceso que ocurre en la mayoría de los casos en forma repentina o inesperada, y causa alteraciones en los patrones normales de vida o actividad humana.

Las contingencias pueden ser originadas por la manifestación de un fenómeno natural, o pueden ser ocasionadas por actividad humana o como consecuencia de una falla de carácter técnico.

Inspirados en el film homónimo “El día después de mañana», donde el Armagedón desatado por un abrupto cambio climático, evidencia la experiencia de estar expuesto; de diversas formas; a situaciones traumáticas. Surge de inmediato un paralelo con diferentes situaciones en que las áreas de Recursos Humanos deben intervenir.

DAT, por sus siglas en inglés (Day after tomorrow), resume un equipo de trabajo especializado en hacer frente a las contingencias del “día después”. Continuar leyendo «DAT, el día después…»

Social media and the multiplier effect

The multiplier effect: Each additional quality friend or follower in your network increases the value of all other people on your network.

I came up with this concept whilst grinding my teeth to nubs over demands like this: «I only have 500 followers. My competitor has 50,000. Get me more followers!»

See, most social media campaigns devolve into spamfests. It’s like the early- and middle-age of e-mail marketing. More = better, therefore let’s send crap out to every sucker we can find. It’s accumulation marketing [blast from the past alert]. And it never works for long.
Where social media spam comes from

Spam – particularly social media spam – comes from a long-time belief that a bigger network of potential customers is always better.

That belief comes from a traditional marketing formula: Add another person to your network of potential customers, and best case is that each member of that network keeps the same value.

by ian | http://www.conversationmarketing.com

Marketing nerdiness alert! This post has some heavy-duty marketing geekination in it. You have been warned.

(…)

The multiplier effect: Each additional quality friend or follower in your network increases the value of all other people on your network.

I came up with this concept whilst grinding my teeth to nubs over demands like this: «I only have 500 followers. My competitor has 50,000. Get me more followers!»

Where social media spam comes from

Spam – particularly social media spam – comes from a long-time belief that a bigger network of potential customers is always better.

That belief comes from a traditional marketing formula: Add another person to your network of potential customers, and best case is that each member of that network keeps the same value.

Say I have a network of 1,000 potential customers, with each customer worth $1. Then I add another person to the network. Conventional wisdom says that the best I can hope for is that each network member remains worth $1. It’s likely that, as I add more people, the background noise and accidental addition of people who have no interest in my product at all will reduce the value of every individual network member:

So, goes conventional wisdom, if your plan is to grow sales and customer base, you need to expand your network exponentially to make up for the lost value. A massive network is always better than a small one, and individuals are worth less and less.

That’s why otherwise intelligent people still click on messages like this:

And it’s why I crack molars.

But it doesn’t add up. If a massive network is always better, why is it that someone tweeting to 50,000 people gets me 3 clicks, and someone tweeting to 5,000 gets me 10,000 clicks?

Go figure. Continuar leyendo «Social media and the multiplier effect»

Movement from Test to Experience: a Fundamental Shift in Assessment Perspective

Despite the advantages listed above, we need to be realists and face the fact that testing is a difficult game to be in. Despite a huge shot in the arm provided by technology, the basic testing paradigm still involves candidates filling in small circles and likely grousing a bit in the process.

On the other side of the fence, many companies view a “test” as isolated element of the hiring process, not an integrated part of the bigger picture. As a result of this paradigm it is not a stretch to say that in their current mainstream state of use:

* Tests are boring — they are not engaging for candidates. In fact, they have the opposite effect.
* Tests build walls — it is very common for a separate function to be in charge of testing and for tests to be an “add on,” creating separation between various parts of the recruitment/staffing functions
* Tests are highly localized — although highly effective as key parts of an employee lifecycle/talent management perspective, tests are most commonly used to fight fires
* Tests offer only a one-way dialogue — pre-employment tests provide no feedback to the applicant and by doing so can function to erode employment branding efforts

by Dr. Charles Handler | //ere.net

Those of us in the testing and assessment business are very proud of what we do. We have about 50 years of experience in helping companies to make better hiring decisions, resulting in happier employees and increased ROI. Some of the benefits of pre-employment assessments include:

Sound methodology: when created correctly, assessments provide an accurate and reliable way to measure constructs important for job performance
ROI: we have tons of data to show that assessments provide a strong value add to the hiring process
Variety: there are thousands of tests available, covering almost every job and industry
Versatility: tests can be used for both pre- and post-hire assessment, helping them offer more value

Tests are boring — they are not engaging for candidates. In fact, they have the opposite effect.
Tests build walls — it is very common for a separate function to be in charge of testing and for tests to be an “add on,” creating separation between various parts of the recruitment/staffing functions
Tests are highly localized — although highly effective as key parts of an employee lifecycle/talent management perspective, tests are most commonly used to fight fires
Tests offer only a one-way dialogue — pre-employment tests provide no feedback to the applicant and by doing so can function to erode employment branding efforts

The positive and negative factors associated with testing combined with what I call “technology push” (the idea that advances in technology push all businesses and industries upward and forward by providing the infrastructure needed for innovation) are driving a fundamental shift in testing. This shift will carry us away from thinking about “tests” toward an increased focus on the idea of creating an “experience” that adds value for all parties involved in multiple ways.

We can expect this shift in focus to bring an increase in:

Transparency: tests will become embedded into a more engaging candidate experience until they become transparent to the applicant
Interactivity: experiences will increase the level of interactivity between organizations and job applicants/employees, as well as interactivity within the applicant population
Predictive accuracy: technology-backed experiences will help create major shifts in predictive capabilities of assessment-based content based on business intelligence and data analysis that flows from increased engagement and interactivity Continuar leyendo «Movement from Test to Experience: a Fundamental Shift in Assessment Perspective»

10 Usability Tips Based on Research Studies [Excellent]

We hear plenty usability tips and techniques from an incalculable number of sources. Many of the ones we take seriously have sound logic, but it’s even more validating when we find actual data and reports to back up their theories and conjectures.

1. Forget the «Three-Click Rule»

The idea that users will get frustrated if they have to click more than three times to find a piece of content on your website has been around for ages. In 2001, Jeffrey Zeldman, a recognized authority in the web design industry, wrote that the three-click rule «can help you create sites with intuitive, logical hierarchical structures» in his book, Taking Your Talent to the Web.

Logically, it makes sense. Of course, users will be frustrated if they spend a lot of time clicking around to find what they need.

But why the arbitrary three-click limit? Is there any indication that web users will suddenly give up if it takes them three clicks to get to what the want?

In fact, most users won’t give up just because they’ve hit some magical number. The number of clicks they have to make isn’t related to user frustration.

A study conducted by Joshua Porter published on User Interface Engineering found out that users aren’t more likely to resign to failure after three clicks versus a higher number such as 12 clicks. «Hardly anybody gave up after three clicks,» Porter said.

//sixrevisions.com
by Cameron Chapman | Six Revisions

We hear plenty usability tips and techniques from an incalculable number of sources. Many of the ones we take seriously have sound logic, but it’s even more validating when we find actual data and reports to back up their theories and conjectures.

1. Forget the «Three-Click Rule»

Logically, it makes sense. Of course, users will be frustrated if they spend a lot of time clicking around to find what they need.

But why the arbitrary three-click limit? Is there any indication that web users will suddenly give up if it takes them three clicks to get to what the want?

In fact, most users won’t give up just because they’ve hit some magical number. The number of clicks they have to make isn’t related to user frustration.

Source: User Interface Engineering

The focus, then, shouldn’t be on reducing the number of clicks to some magically arrived number, but rather on the ease of utility. If you can construct a user interface that’s easy and pleasurable to use, but takes like 15 clicks (e.g. 5 times more than the three-click rule) to achieve a particular task — don’t let the arbitrary three-click rule stop you.

Sources and Further Reading

2. Enable Content Skimming By Using an F-Shaped Pattern

Dr. Jakob Nielsen, a pioneer in the field of usability, conducted an eye tracking study on the reading habits of web users comprising of over 230 participants. What the research study displayed was that participants exhibited an F-shaped pattern when scanning web content.

Source: Alertbox

A similar study, by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it in collaboration with eye-tracking research firm Eyetools, witnessed a similar pattern when they evaluated Google’s search engine results page with an eye tracking study that included 50 participants. Dubbed the «Google Golden Triangle» because the concentration of eye gazes tended to be top and left, the results are congruent with the F-shaped pattern seen in Nielsen’s independent research.

Source: Clickr Media

For designers and web copywriters, these results suggest that content you want to be seen should be placed towards the left, and also that the use of content that fits an F-shaped pattern (such as headings followed by paragraphs or bullet points) increases the likelihood that they will be encountered by a user who is skimming a web page. Continuar leyendo «10 Usability Tips Based on Research Studies [Excellent]»

Cell phones, how are adults using mobile phones?? [PDF download link]

Some interesting items that pop out of the report and graphics?

– 18% of people 18 to 24 years old send more than 200 text messages per day

– This heavy texting (200+ per day) drops to 3% for people 25 to 29 years old

– Heavy text users do not text exclusively. In fact, they also make a lot of voice calls. 26% of heavy text messegers make 31 or more voice calls per day

What is it these people text and say in all of these messages every day?

By Todd Ogasawara

What Do People Who Send 200+ Text Messages & 30+ Voice Calls Per Day Have to Say?

The Pew Internet and American Life Project released another report of interest to gadget fans.

Cell phones and American adults (available online & PDF download)

Flowtown.com turned Pew’s numberes into a series of easy to understand pie charts and bar graphs.

How Are Adults Using Mobile Phones?

Some interesting items that pop out of the report and graphics?

– 18% of people 18 to 24 years old send more than 200 text messages per day

– This heavy texting (200+ per day) drops to 3% for people 25 to 29 years old

– Heavy text users do not text exclusively. In fact, they also make a lot of voice calls. 26% of heavy text messegers make 31 or more voice calls per day

What is it these people text and say in all of these messages every day?

http://www.mediabistro.com/mobileContentToday/

Six Revisions: A Comprehensive Guide Inside Your

by Alexander Dawson

Become a Facebook Fan of Six Revisions.

As web designers and developers, we pay so much attention to what’s directly on the screen (or in our code) that the <head> of a document and what’s inside is often considered as an afterthought.

While in many cases it’s true that what appears on the screen is the most important part of a website (the content is what people visit a site for), the «thinking code» inside the <head> of our documents plays an important role.

This article will examine exactly what can fit inside a website’s head.

Mastering the Mind

The head of an HTML document is a busy area, and while it may not have the range of elements that the <body> can flex, it can actually engineer a range of its own elements to play vital roles in how a site will operate or how it can interoperate with other sites.

Depending on the website, there might be plenty going on inside its head.

So what are your options and how can they benefit your website? Well there’s quite a lot actually!

There are ways to add useful metadata into your documents (for search engines and other web robots to find), icons that you can supply web browsers for extra visuals (like favicons or device-specific icons for the iPad/iPhone), ways to allow the syndication of your content, and even stylistic and behavioral references that include external stylesheets and scripts.

In essence, the <head> of our HTML documents give the markup below it extra meaning. Continuar leyendo «Six Revisions: A Comprehensive Guide Inside Your»

Promises Aren’t Enough

//sloanreview.mit.edu

By Rodrigo Canales, B. Cade Massey and Amy Wrzesniewski
Business schools need to do a better job teaching students values

It is a sign of the times that hundreds of Harvard Business School’s 2009 and 2010 graduates took “The MBA Oath.” These students promised to “serve the greater good,” act ethically, and refrain from pursuing greed at others’ expense.

We are inspired that students who will soon be in positions of leadership vow to reject the temptations their predecessors could not. But they and the more than 100,000 new M.B.A. students who enrolled this year will need more than an oath if they wish to become ethical business leaders. Simply put, such oaths sound much like chastity vows taken by thousands of teens every year. The problem in both cases is not a lack of sincerity, but a failure to adequately prepare for the moment of truth.

Just Words

Like a chastity vow, the M.B.A. oath has an unstated assumption that those who have gone before are somehow different: They had weaker wills, less resolve, looser morals. The oath is meant to signal a stronger commitment to values. The danger is the false sense of moral inoculation such oaths engender. Just as teenagers who take a chastity vow in lieu of better sexual education are more vulnerable to the consequences of unprotected sex—vow takers are actually more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior—M.B.A.s who take an ethics oath without enough supporting leadership education are likely more vulnerable to ethical breaches.

Executive Adviser

Innovations in management theory & business strategy – a collaboration with The Wall Street Journal

The power of the situation, and our too frequent disregard for it, is an overarching lesson from sociology and social psychology. Situational forces drive behavior to a surprising extent, much more than expected by those who believe character determines all.

This lesson has been implicated in one scandal after another, from Enron to Abu Ghraib. Pledges made without the benefit of experience with compromising situations, and without some kind of supporting structure, actually exacerbate the problem.

Designing the Soft Side of Customer Service

In service environments, customers have complex needs. Even in the most mundane encounters, emotions are lurking under the surface. Your job is to make those feelings positive.

When people think about innovation in customer service, they usually think in terms of technological or process enhancements that make service delivery faster or more efficient. In recent years, restaurants have introduced hand-held devices that buzz patrons when their table is ready, and supermarkets offer customers self-service checkout lines. While such innovations may simplify matters for customers, service organizations rarely stop to consider the overall psychology that shapes service encounters. Indeed, despite the plethora of articles and books about managing the customer experience, many key psychological variables that influence customer perceptions — the subtle enhancements that help define a positive experience — have yet to be defined or articulated fully.

Organizations often measure the outcomes of service encounters in concrete terms such as on-time flight arrivals or the time to resolve a customer’s call. However, the subjective outcomes — the emotions and the feelings — are more difficult to describe: Did the passenger enjoy the flight? Did the customer who called the service center with a problem hang up feeling better about the provider? Much as having a deeper understanding of systems dynamics and process analysis has pushed companies to re-engineer their operations to achieve explicit outcomes, findings from behavioral decision- making research, cognitive psychology and social psychology can point service providers to ideas for redesigning the psychological or implicit aspects of service encounters.

Service and Quality

By Sriram Dasu and Richard B. Chase

In service environments, customers have complex needs. Even in the most mundane encounters, emotions are lurking under the surface. Your job is to make those feelings positive.

Liderazgo Salvaje

La mayor parte de la literatura sobre la administración de empresas y la gestión de personas se fundamentan sobre ideas erróneas respecto al liderazgo y la jerarquía, centrándolo en el poder o la dominancia, aunque sea de una manera encubierta y en nombre del “humanismo”. Proliferan gurús y expertos que te aconsejan cómo manipular a los que te rodean. Por lo general, estos mensajes no tienen en cuenta otro tipo de motivaciones importantes para la especie humana como son el prestigio, el valor de las relaciones personales o la lealtad. En experimentos con primates no-humanos, se ha demostrado que éstas son fuerzas poderosas de la dinámica social.

Pablo Herreros Ubalde

Continuar leyendo «Liderazgo Salvaje»

Reminding Yourself That You Love What You Do

Reminding yourself that you love what you do is an important part of keeping your mind and your work fresh. As creative professionals, it’s easy to get caught up in the business end of things and not actually spending much time doing anything for ourselves. If you are freelancing or working at an agency, it’s important to have something in your pipeline that’s done just for the fun of it.

The first thing to do is look back at your motivation for getting started in this profession in the first place. Why’d you start doing this, anyway?

Each of us has different reasons for doing what we’re doing. Maybe you went to school for design, turned a hobby into a career, or started out in email marketing and somehow ended up doing UIs for iPhone apps.

No matter what your history is, there’s something that attracted you to what you do — and that’s exactly what you should revisit. In this article, I’ll be talking about working on personal projects for the purpose of reenergizing your enthusiasm for your work.
Break Away From the «Minutia Mindset»

As web professionals, we often wear many hats. Multi-tasking is a key part of what many of us do, but most of us hate the act of multi-tasking itself. It takes up a lot of time and it’s easy to get caught up with small details (like emails and managing finances). It takes away your ability to focus on one thing because you’re caught up in all the other stuff. We’ll call this the minutia mindset.

Giving yourself a project to do on your own time is a great way to break away from the minutia mindset. Sure, you still have your normal work to do, but spending your own time to do something for you will make the work you’re doing for others better.

There are many benefits that a personal project can bring to your professional career and growth. There are no deadlines (unless you give yourself one), you can experiment as much as you wish, and most importantly, you’re only listening to one person: yourself…

August 6th, 2010 by Rosston Meyer

The first thing to do is look back at your motivation for getting started in this profession in the first place. Why’d you start doing this, anyway?

Break Away From the «Minutia Mindset»

Giving yourself a project to do on your own time is a great way to break away from the minutia mindset. Sure, you still have your normal work to do, but spending your own time to do something for you will make the work you’re doing for others better.

Marketing lateral II: 10 diferencias del pensamiento lateral frente al pensamiento vertical

En la primera parte de este artículo “Marketing lateral 1ª parte: atreverse a cambiar o dejarse morir” exponía los planteamientos de porque cuesta admitir la palabra “cambio” y somos tan reacios a ella. La realidad es que es una palabra que asusta en cualquier ámbito de la vida en que la planteemos pues nos dirige hacia lo desconocido, obligándonos a salir de nuestro círculo de comodidad y por tanto a movernos en aguas que no controlamos, y antes eso, como reza el dicho popular: “preferimos lo malo conocido que lo bueno por conocer”, haciéndonos perder en muchos casos la oportunidad de abrir nuevas puertas a nuevos planteamientos que nos podrían llevar lejos.

Ahora vamos a ver como se aplica esa teoría a la práctica, como el Marketing Lateral, nos dirige hacia “hacer las cosas diferentes” en vez de empeñarnos en sólo buscar la forma de “hacerlas mejor” y de esta forma, aportarnos caminos que jamás nos hubiéramos imaginado, y como, de forma sencilla, podemos encontrar esas ideas sorprendentes.

Antonio Domingo

El hábito del pensamiento vertical es adaptar la realidad a lo que ya conocemos y el pensamiento lateral desafía este planteamiento para poder descubrir nuevas formas y conseguir nuevas conclusiones que nada tiene que ver con la lógica.

El pensamiento lateral rompe la lógica que hemos aprendido y utilizado durante décadas con el pensamiento vertical, pero esa transgresión nos permite encontrar nuevos caminos que antes no habíamos visto. El pensamiento vertical nos crea patrones y adapta las novedades a lo que conoce, mientras que el lateral está dispuesto a explorar esas nuevas situaciones para ver a donde conducen. Hay unas diferencias principales muy claras.

Fotografía: Pensamientolateral.blogspot.com.

Defining Innovation

We often toss around the terms “innovative” or “innovation” when describing companies, products, services, or experiences. It almost seems as though the term(s) are overused. In fact, a Google search for “innovation” returns over 97 million results! If you’re one of those that throws around the term, have you ever compared the definition of “innovation” to see if it actually fits? That could prove confusing too since there are over 18.8 million search results for “definition of innovation”. If we use the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s definition of “innovation”, it would be described as “the introduction of something new [or] a new idea, method or device”.

Posted by Justin Levy

We often toss around the terms “innovative” or “innovation” when describing companies, products, services, or experiences. It almost seems as though the term(s) are overused. In fact, a Google search for “innovation” returns over 97 million results! If you’re one of those that throws around the term, have you ever compared the definition of “innovation”

We often toss around the terms “innovative” or “innovation” when describing companies, products, services, or experiences. It almost seems as though the term(s) are overused. In fact, a Google search for “innovation” returns over 97 million results! If you’re one of those that throws around the term, have you ever compared the definition of “innovation” to see if it actually fits? That could prove confusing too since there are over 18.8 million search results for “definition of innovation”. If we use the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s definition of “innovation”, it would be described as “the introduction of something new [or] a new idea, method or device”. Continuar leyendo «Defining Innovation»

10 Basic Principles of Innovation

Today’s post is from Matthew Greeley, Founder and CEO of Brightidea, the global leader in On-Demand Innovation Management software. Prior to founding Brightidea, Matthew consulted for Wrenchead.com, helping them raise over $100 million in venture funding from investors. He holds a degree in Computer Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology and studied Creativity and Marketing at Stanford University. In addition to his role at Brightidea, Matthew sits on the board of directors of ClearDay Technologies.

After 10 years of working in the trenches of innovation, I have attempted to distill down the ten MOST important concepts that I believe anyone working in this field should be aware of:

Posted by Erica Templeman

Today’s post is from Matthew Greeley, Founder and CEO of Brightidea, the global leader in On-Demand Innovation Management software. Prior to founding Brightidea, Matthew consulted for Wrenchead.com, helping them raise over $100 million in venture funding from investors. He holds a degree in Computer Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology and studied Creativity and Marketing […]

Today’s post is from Matthew Greeley, Founder and CEO of Brightidea, the global leader in On-Demand Innovation Management software. Prior to founding Brightidea, Matthew consulted for Wrenchead.com, helping them raise over $100 million in venture funding from investors. He holds a degree in Computer Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology and studied Creativity and Marketing at Stanford University. In addition to his role at Brightidea, Matthew sits on the board of directors of ClearDay Technologies.

After 10 years of working in the trenches of innovation, I have attempted to distill down the ten MOST important concepts that I believe anyone working in this field should be aware of: Continuar leyendo «10 Basic Principles of Innovation»

Top 5 Innovation Trends and Issues

What is happening in the innovation community right now? In this post, I give a quick overview of the top trends and issues that I see based on the interactions I have had over the last month or so.

1. Intrapreneurship

How can we establish – or improve – programs that makes us better at identifying and developing ideas and let our own people (intrapreneurs) – turn them into revenue and profits?

I have had two requests on this within a few weeks after a long time with almost no focus on this. A new trend? Perhaps. It also comes with a new twist as some companies finally try to combine this with their open innovation efforts. Very interesting…

Check this article to get an idea of intrapreneurship programs: Driving Innovation In Large Corporations

What is happening in the innovation community right now? In this post, I give a quick overview of the top trends and issues that I see based on the interactions I have had over the last month or so.

1. Intrapreneurship

How can we establish – or improve – programs that makes us better at identifying and developing ideas and let our own people (intrapreneurs) – turn them into revenue and profits?

Check this article to get an idea of intrapreneurship programs: Driving Innovation In Large Corporations Continuar leyendo «Top 5 Innovation Trends and Issues»